peer into the looking glass

Long ago in a lifetime far, far away…Okay, when I was in my twenties, my friend and I liked to drive up Calabasas way and visit Tapia Park—part of the larger Malibu Creek State Park. They used to film M*A*S*H and other TV shows in Malibu Creek Park (still do film up there) and some parts of Planet of the Apes and other films. In fact, much of the land was owned by 20^th Century Fox for location filming until the state acquired it for park land. Before that it was a country club. Before that it was taken over by Spanish and Yankee squatters. Before that, it belonged to the Chumash tribe for centuries.

The smaller area of Tapia Park has hiking and biking and equestrian trails but the part we visited mostly just had lots of majestic oak trees and less majestic picnic tables. The big attraction for us was Malibu Creek itself, which ran along the western edge. (I think it was the western edge. Pardon me if I’ve gotten the direction wrong.) To me, this area always had a presence, a kind of watching-waiting, sometimes benevolent if you caught it in the right mood and there weren’t a lot of people around, sometimes—well, if not hostile, then reluctant to have company, if you know what I mean. I never felt anything sinister there but sometimes it just was not in the mood.

What we liked to do was pack a lunch, take our shoes off, and go wading down the creek. In the rainy season (usually October to April here in SoCal) it was prone to flood. In the latter months of the summer, it was greatly diminished. But there was a sweet spot in late spring and early summer when the creek flowed freely and was really delightful. Chapparal grew all around and every year there was a different growing arrangement along the creek. If you’ve been in the SoCal hills on a hot day, you’ll know chaparral has a distinctive scent: wild fennel, barley, sage, manzanita, and other plants give it the baking aroma of some exotic bread. It’s a unique scent I’ve never smelled anywhere else I’ve been in the world and it always says to me: home. The creek had rock pools and small waterfall cascades over the big rocks. The flow was never so much to threaten to knock you off your feet, but some of those pools were deceptively deep and it wasn’t unusual to take a step and wind up with a soaked crotch. But it didn’t matter. I loved it so much. It lifted my heart and spirit.

One year we went on a particularly long wade down the creek and spotted a stone pillar standing on a slight rise in the creek bed. It was about three feet in diameter and about four feet high and it was composed of shale—lovely streaks of salmon and gold and caramel and flecks of black and white. It felt like a natural altar to me. It stood all alone, maybe fifteen to twenty feet from the cliff behind it. Shale is very flinty and flakes off easily, so it’s entirely possible this had once been part of the cliff behind it—perhaps an arch or some such geological formation that got washed away by eons of floods. It had a presence, though, a sense of self-containment, even as the water washed by it, and a sense of wonder. There were a bunch of loose shale pieces on top of it. I picked up a piece that beckoned to me, put it in my pocket, and took it home.

No, this is not one of those stories like you hear from Hawaii or California ghost towns where if you take something your luck turns terrible and you have to ship the rock or whatever back to the park it came from to save yourself. I had that piece of shale for years with no ill effect, proudly displayed with other rocks I’d collected here and there. (It’s probably still around here somewhere but I’ve no idea where. That seems to be the theme of my life these days.) But sometime after I’d collected that rock I couldn’t remember if I’d thanked the altar for it. I thanked it in absentia but somehow felt the need for an in person visit—because I felt so drawn to it. It took me a while to get back there—the next year, in fact. My friend and I waded down the stream but never found the altar even though we knew we’d waded farther than the year before (using a bridge over the creek as a marker). Where had it disappeared to? Who hid it from our view?

I don’t really think it somehow mystically, magically disappeared. Perhaps the chapparal grew thicker around it that year and hid it from view. But…perhaps the park and the altar were just not in the mood for my nonsense. I only know that I’ve always wanted to find it again, but it’s been a very long time since I visited Tapia Park, and I’m no longer physically capable of hiking down that creek. Its disappearance, however, has kept it playing through my mind and heart ever since. Probably no enchantment involved. Probably nothing magical about it. Except, perhaps, the enchantment of a heart always willing to believe in the possibility of magic.

But it could be magic, right?


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